EXCLUSIVE – PLO Official: Meeting With Kushner Will Be A ‘Waste of Time’

Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty ImagesALI WAKED24 Aug 2017

TEL AVIV — Meetings between the Palestinian Authority and American delegates led by President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner are “a waste of time,” Dr. Wasel Abu Yousef, director of the Palestinian Liberation Front and member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, told Breitbart Jerusalem.

“The meeting planned for Thursday with government delegates who are coming to advance the political process is just another meeting in an effort to buy time,” claimed Yousef. “It’s a waste of time and we aren’t seeing any declaration or clear statements from the American delegation regarding Palestinian demands.”

Kushner is currently leading a delegation to the Middle East that includes Jason Greenblatt, envoy for international negotiations, and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell. The three are in Cairo on Wednesday and are due in Israel on Thursday for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

According to Yousef, the Palestinians intend to present the Americans once again with their position demanding the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders “and the cessation of the settlements, which are an ongoing war crime against the Palestinians.”

Yousef glossed over the fact that the Palestinians turned down previous statehood offers by Israel and that PA President Mahmoud Abbas failed to respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s settlement freezes, which were enacted as gestures to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian talks.

The Palestinian official, meanwhile, criticized the American government, saying, “More than six months since the beginning of the new administration, they haven’t presented any new ideas. And despite the 19 meetings that have taken place between administration representatives and the Palestinians, nothing has happened besides the waste of time that’s characterized these six months.”

Yousef added, “Until now, American administration representatives have not clarified what Trump’s vision is regarding this historic deal and what solution they see to the Palestinian issue. The Palestinians told the Americans that the basis of negotiations isn’t clear and that it’s a UN resolution that decided that the territories captured in ’67 are occupied territories upon which a Palestinian country will be created with Jerusalem as its capital.”

The 1967 borders refer to the entire West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, including Jerusalem’s Old City, which includes the Western Wall and Temple Mount.

“Until now, there has been no serious discussion of this with the Americans, or of the need to stop the settlements at a time when the Israelis continue to establish facts on the ground.”

Yousef called on the Palestinians “to stop gambling on the American position, which is biased in favor of the occupation. It would be an illusion to trust the Americans in the shadow of their strategic alliance with the occupation, an alliance in which they give the occupation support politically, militarily and economically.”

The Palestinians are aspiring to reach a situation in which American will not be the sole patron and mediator in the Middle East peace process, Yousef revealed. “And that’s because our understanding is that the Americans are wasting time, as they’ve done constantly in recent years,” he claimed.

“The Americans have adopted the Israeli outlook that the conflict must be managed rather than acting to solve it. In this mindset, and as they waste time, they talk about the big deal between Israel and the Arab world and the trust-building economic steps they’ll give the Palestinians. All this is a waste of time.”

The enraged Palestinian official continued by spewing unfounded anti-Israel conspiracies: “We don’t want economic and humanitarian mitigation. We want to see an end to the occupation so that its crimes, manifested in the killing of innocents, the destruction of homes and the Judaization of Palestinian cities through the expansion of settlements come to an end.”

Despite his critical comments, however, Yousef said he believes that Trump wants to reach a political solution, “but he undermines this by adopting all the positions of the occupation and by defending its interests, especially when the Israeli position dodges the idea of two states the entire way and tries to give the Palestinians an existence divided into cantons and to run an apartheid regime within this existence.” No such apartheid regime exists.

Yousef went on to call for unity with the Hamas terrorist group and called for “popular resistance” against Israel, a euphemism for terrorism. “The Palestinians need to adopt a clear strategy that tries to handle the challenges,” he told Breitbart Jerusalem. “In this context, we must reach an internal Palestinian reconciliation with Hamas and reorganize the Palestinian front because this is the way, together with the popular resistance, to deal with the occupation.”

“And we’ve seen that unity and the popular struggle succeeded in overwhelming the occupation and preventing it from forcing hegemony on the Al Aqsa Mosque,” he continued. “Reconciliation and internal organization of the Palestinian front in the name of dealing with the occupation must be the top priority of the Palestinian leadership. This will also strengthen the Palestinian position in any future political negotiations.”

Yousef said he believes that reconciliation with Hamas does not contradict the Palestinians’ commitment to the political process. “The national reconciliation document signed by Hamas in 2006 already gives the PLO the authority to conduct political negotiations,” he concluded. He conveniently ignored that Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel.